(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a road modeling method, and more particularly, to a method for recognizing a curved lane on which a vehicle is traveling by dividing an image of the lane into two parts and modeling a curved lane.
(b) Description of the Related Art
Generally, in an automated highway system, after recognizing a lane, a vehicle provides information for steering to a driver or automatically steers according to the recognized lane.
A curved lane is modeled through a predetermined modeling method using an image of a lane photographed by a digital camera. In recognizing a lane, it is important to recognize a curved lane.
FIG. 1 shows a method for recognizing a curved lane in a road modeling method.
A conventional road modeling method, with reference to FIG. 1, includes the steps of extracting lane edge components of road lane markers and modeling a straight lane or a curved lane using the acquired lane edge components.
A CCD (Charged-Coupled Device) camera continuously photographs images of the lane markers and provides the collected images to a road modeling processor. Then, the processor extracts the lane edge components from the images of the lane markers.
If the lane edge components are extracted, road modeling is performed by a given modeling method. There are two typical modeling methods, one of which is a method to model a straight lane and the other being a method to model a curved lane.
FIG. 2 shows an example of modeling a straight lane on a curved lane.
A straight lane delineated by the lines “b” is modeled from a lane component of lines “a” acquired by extracting the lane edge components from the photographed images.
However, if a curved lane is recognized as a straight lane, some problems occur. For example, if this method is used in a system for preventing a vehicle from deviating from a lane or a system for sounding an alarm when the vehicle deviates from the lane, it may cause a malfunction or mis-alarming.
On the other hand, if a curved lane is modeled on a curved road, the curved road is recognized as it is but real time processing is difficult because of too many calculations.